Several months have now passed since my last review, and our baby daughter is now 7.5 months old. We have re-read parts of to the book Secrets of the Baby Whisperer several times and found it useful for these first months. As the book admits much of the reasoning for how babies behave is down to their individual characters, but there is some useful information in the book.

The one thing that we've been very happy with is that our baby sleeps through the night and has done so since she was 10 weeks old. Now I know that there are a lot of parents that will be envious of this. I'm not sure how much the advice in Secrets of the baby whisperer has helped towards this, but I do think that some of the advice has helped. I think that there is another factor that was not in the book which helped, and that is we moved our baby out of her moses basket into her cot. You generally get advice to keep the baby sleeping in your room for as long as possible, but for us moving our baby into her own room in her cot really helped her sleeping. I think that this is down to her being able to see out of the cot. When she was in the moses basket she appeared to be frustrated by how little she could see.

The other thing that I believe helped her sleep is the routine that we established. The routine is fairly flexible as advised in Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, so that it fits in with what we want to do and finding convenient locations etc., but our baby knows when she is put to bed in the evening that she is expected to sleep. She still wakes up whilst in bed, but will lay in her cot content perhaps playing with her toys, but more often just playing with her own hands. Normally only starting to complain about the lateness of breakfast at between 7:30 and 8:30, about 10 to 12 hours after we had put her to bed.

The main point from the title of the book is that the book is supposed to help you understand your babies cries and so make it easier to give the baby what he wants and keep your baby happy. The book explains the differences between the different cry sounds, but this is one thing I didn't really follow particularly well. It did however give you some other clues to the reason that the baby is upset, including signs that the baby is overtired etc. This was particularly useful as even without understanding the sound of the cries I was often able to identify what was the matter with our baby.

We have a baby that is happy most of the time, and when she isn't we have a good idea of what is up and how to help her. She fits into a routine that is flexible enough to make it convenient for us and her when we are out. It would be wrong to say that this is just down to a single book, but I'm sure that it has helped.